Americans take citizenship for granted

Mary Sanchez Tribune Media Services

American-born kids, the ones who are legally here, they waste it, the teenager told me. They do drugs, they drink, they don't study. They join gangs or simply think the gang life is hip.

"They have such great opportunity and they could do so many things," she said. "They don't embrace that opportunity."

This young woman, who was dragged across the border in the middle of the night as a grade schooler by her parents, is settled into high school life in the United States. Her grades are stellar. And, she admits, she looks upon her classmates with envy. One errant phone call, one slip up that would alert authorities, and her world would crumble. She'd find herself back in Mexico with few chances to use the knowledge she is so fervently stockpiling.

Say what you like about the illegal immigrant population of the United States, but their children can offer sobering views of their American counterparts.

Our conversation replayed in my head with the recent news of the nation's dropout rates. Half of the students in the country's largest cities leave school without a diploma. That's like firing half the future workforce before they can even get hired.

The United States cannot maintain its status in the world if we are losing so many of our young people's minds before they reach voting age. This is not the 1800s, when a strong back would earn you a good wage. It's not the 1950s, when a factory job could be guaranteed for life. People need a high school education, at a minimum.

Yet only about seven of every 10 high school students graduate, according to an April study by America's Promise Alliance, headed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Native Americans had the lowest high school graduation rate, at 49.3 percent, followed by black students at 53.4 percent, Hispanics at 57.8 percent, and whites at 76.2 percent. Asians led with an 80.2 percent graduation rate.

Many experts believe the dropout rates are higher than reported.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is fond of wondering when the nation will receive its "Sputnik moment" with regard to education - a wake-up call that jolts us out of our complacency about public education. She is involved with programs to get U.S. kids up to speed in math and science, lest we be left behind by other countries where children study instead of engrossing themselves in Guitar Hero.

The temptation here is to go on my own rant, to let fly with a haughty reproach like the one Bill Cosby famously delivered to poor black folks a few years back. His borderline cruel critique of the troubling attitudes in black America brought cheers from many who simply wanted to hear a good tongue-lashing. And, indeed, there was some justification to what he said, even if his remarks ignored the more complicated discussion of structural impediments the poor face. So I'll leave my message to fellow Latinos at this: As the nation's largest minority group, we will be a burden to this country - not a boon - if only half of us can make it through high school.

With all the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship, do we also gain the right not to care about the country's future? To be lazy and unproductive, to squander the benefits of a middle-class background, a firm foothold on U.S. soil by virtue of a birth certificate? Shouldn't there be a responsibility to become educated in a way that keeps the country strong through innovation, hard work and the resulting commerce?

I wonder sometimes if some of the backlash against immigrants doesn't boil down to this: Many of us born here see their diligence and recognize that, by comparison, we're slackers.

Mary Sanchez is a columnist for The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413; e-mail her at msanchez@kcstar.com.